Freelance Writer/Editor

Washington Post

28 March 2013

In “Salt Sugar Fat," investigative reporter Michael Moss shows how
executives and food scientists at Coca-Cola, Kraft, Frito-Lay and Nestle
are well aware that sugary, fatty and salty foods light up the same
pleasure centers in our brains that cocaine does. Though they avoid
using the word “addictive,” they knowingly concoct “crave-able” foods
that have a high “bliss point” of sugar and hefty “mouthfeels” of fat.
At the same time, they employ insidious tactics to keep their “heavy
users” using and to hook new consumers, especially children. If you had
any doubt as to the food industry’s complicity in our obesity epidemic,
it will evaporate when you read this astonishing book.

Moss shows us how ruthless these companies are
at exploiting our built-in cravings for salt, sugar and fat,
aggressively marketing junk food not just to children but to the poor.
The class division becomes even more apparent when Moss asks food
scientists and executives at these companies if they drink soda or feed
their kids Cheetos and Lunchables (prepackaged trays of bologna,
“cheese” and crackers). They don’t. When Moss sits down with Howard
Moskowitz, the man who reinvented Dr Pepper, to taste his signature
drink, Moskowitz demurs: “I’m not a soda drinker. It’s not good for your
teeth.”

"Salt, Sugar, Fat" is an indictment of both big food and government, which has proved ineffective at protecting the public's health.

07 June 2012

Economist Tyler Cowen calls himself an “everyday foodie,” and his new book, “An Economist Gets Lunch,” is aimed at people like him. So it seems reasonable to ask: What is an everyday foodie? A single mom on food stamps who shops at the farmers market? A locavore who cooks nourishing meals for less than $5?

It’s impossible to say, because throughout this distractingly discursive book, Cowen never defines the term. At first, he hints that he’s addressing eaters of a lower income bracket. “I also view wise eating as a way to limit inequality,” he writes, noting that in the United States the wealthy often eat better than the middle class. “It doesn’t have to be this way and I’m explaining how, even on a modest income, you can eat and enjoy some of the tastiest food in the world.”

Cowen goes on to mischaracterize locavores and Slow Food activists as "food snobs," and argues unpersuasively that we'll need genetically modified crops to solve world hunger. To read more, see my book review in the Washington Post, which ran on June 1st.